Airflow question.

phongle123 · July 24, 2017

Pretty sure this is a dumb question. I had high temps so I checked out my computer again and noticed it. Didn't really think about it when building. My res. is mounted to my radiator. With the Fans blowing inside so the radiator air is hitting the res. Is that the reason why my temps. are high? Because that seems like the only reason why it would be. When I touch the res., it is pretty warm-hot temp.

Diagram:

If I were to flip the back fan as intake, and front 2 fans as exhaust, (all fans are 140mm), only back fan is AF fan, rest are Static including the 2 bottom. Would it have enough intake airflow? Considering the radiator fans are constricted. But even so that's a 1:2 Intake:Exhaust ratio.

For Science! · July 24, 2017

14 minutes ago, phongle123 said:

-snip-

Your strategy should work, as long as you put a dust filter on your back fan to combat incoming dust. The static pressure fans should be fine against the reservoir, but your new fan strategy would mean that hot air is not reheating the reservoir or the case.

How much the thermals will improve kinda depends on the fan speed and the case. But what you propose is all good in theoru.

phongle123 · July 24, 2017

4 hours ago, For Science! said:

Your strategy should work, as long as you put a dust filter on your back fan to combat incoming dust. The static pressure fans should be fine against the reservoir, but your new fan strategy would mean that hot air is not reheating the reservoir or the case.

How much the thermals will improve kinda depends on the fan speed and the case. But what you propose is all good in theoru.

Alright, so I opened up the case and checked the fans. I had fans that came with the case that was weird so I had it upside down.

This was the original layout. X on fans means that those fans did not run for whatever reason. The main difference here is that, the front 2 fans were actually exhaust instead of intake. So the res. was not heating up from the radiator.

However, this also means that I only had 1 intake fan and 6 exhaust fan for my original layout. If it wasn't the radiator heat that heated up the res. Does that mean that it was the air heating up because there was only 1 intake fan and there wasn't enough air going in the case to circulate it?

For Science! · July 24, 2017

1 minute ago, phongle123 said:

-snip-

Since you have negative pressure in this setup, I think the heat problems comes more from the nature of your chassis and fans (and heat generating components). While having a healthy intake of cool air can help, in a situation where you have more exhaust than intake, the air will "come from somewhere" i.e. from the cracks and small opening of the chassis, so that should in theory be ambient air.

The dead fans obviously don't help (especially the one of the top because it is just extra obstruction), but I think apart form dust problems, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with all-exhaust (its like having a vacuum cleaner on your desk :p). Perhaps you would like to list the following information

- Components in the loop and specification (CPU + GPU? how many GPUs, which kind, etc)

- Total radiator surface and radiator brand

- Pump variant and speed

- Fan name and fan speed

- CPU core temps (under load with something like AIDA64 or Realbench)

- GPU core temps (under load like with Heaven/Valley)

- Water temperatures (if you know)

And perhaps we (the community) can work out if your temps are representative or not.

phongle123 · July 24, 2017

36 minutes ago, For Science! said:

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Besides the fan, the other thing I did different was change the pump speed from 2 to 3.

I have my starting point set like this for an easy flush. But does making the water go up vertically make the flow weaker? Since it has to pump the water up the radiator.

Temps have gotten better. Before, after gaming, 30 mins later (of letting it cool down) it would be idling at 41C. Startup Idle is 33C. While another computer in the same room was idling at 29C after gaming.

Now I'm gonna try to benchmark it and let it cool for 30 minutes and see what my idle temperature after 30 minutes is.